Author:
Date: October 24, 2010
"The Loneliest Monster"
Location: The Catacombs - Sunagakure
His laugh was deep but normal-sounding. Not the dry rasping of before.
His laughs died slowly, petering off into convulsions and chuckles as he
lowered his head again to look at the cake. In an aristocratic baritone,
he said, "My, my. Is this what it has come down to?" He pulled his goggles
up and off his eyes, lowering his hood to his upper back and shoulders in
the process. Two yellowed eyes with bright red irises and darker-red
pupils stared out at the candle flame. The light pained him, but he
endured. "Sitting alone in a hole in the ground like this, celebrating
more than a century and a half of existence, and doing it eight days in
advance of my real birthday, just so it will not interfere with my work
schedule? How pathetic I have become." His voice, though pleasant, also
evidenced tones that were both darkly humored and bitter as blood.
Nai looked at the festive blue and white birthday cake, with sprinkles.
He had made sure the bakery had put sprinkles on it. He had been very
specific. They had asked who the birthday cake was for, and he had told
them. They had wished him a happy birthday. Oh, how he regretted not
killing those two right then and there. Now it was too late, and he was
stuck with this cake. It sat there and mocked him with its very existence,
and to Nai's mind, it represented all he had lost when he became the
monster he was now. He took his hand and placed it on the frosting-laden
dessert, and then applied pressure until it squished out around his
emaciated appendage and bony digits.
"What is eternal life when there is no joy in it? I have attempted to
pursue the path of the living, and it has granted me no satisfaction, no
pleasure… But what else is there? I do not wish to truly die yet. If the
path of the living holds nothing for me, what other path can I follow? The
path of the dead?" Nai sighed and withdrew his hand from the cake. He
stared at the blue and white frosting coating his bandaged hand, feeling
the inane urge to pull down his bandages from over his mouth, and try to
lick it clean. But he had no tongue with which to lick.
"…Wonderful. Now I have begun talking to myself. Just what I needed.
Insanity ontop of being an abomination." Sighing, Nai got up from his
chair and began to leave the chamber. He gestured without looking and
every candle went out at once, without so much as a breeze.
